Cyanide & Cynicism
by jc44
Summary: AH. She’s beautiful, abused and suffering from bipolar I disorder. He’s gorgeous, gifted and clinically depressed. One night, they wind up in the same ER ward. Plagued by different yet similar demons, can they fix each other? Full summary inside. Dark ExB
1. The Artist In the Ambulance by Thrice

**Full Summary: **A beautiful, bipolar art student has slipped beneath the blanket of abuse. Miles away, a gifted clinical depressive with a Botticelli face is battling his own demons. One night, they are both rushed to Seattle Hospital's emergency room. By some dark miracle, they end up in the same ICU room, broken and shattered at the spokes. Can these two strangers piece each other back together or continue to live in silence? ExB, AH. Dark.

**Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight**

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_"If my devils are to leave me, I am afraid my angels will take flight as well." – Rainer Marie Rilke_

I smile to myself, invigorated by my atmosphere. The Seattle wind nips at my cheeks, planting freezing kisses all over. When I giddily sprint up the steps to the apartment, a euphoric sensation envelops me. Giggling incessantly, I wrap my coat tighter around my body and allow the hypomania to spread. I'm coming off a hypomanic episode, the rush of my surroundings elevating me to a new type of high. Maybe I'll paint tonight, set up a new canvas, inspired by my night. Rose's shrill giggle continues to erupt in my mind as I jiggle the front door and skip into the elevator. I punch button number five, and to my unnecessary delight, it glows a low orange. The elevator music elevates both my mood and myself as I brainstorm possible themes to paint. The ding of my arrival sends me flying toward my door, but on my side is lightness, on the other side, darkness. The problem with hypomania is the absence of remembrance.

"Where the fuck have you been?" He yanks my scarf, sending me reeling into the darkness. The door is slammed behind us, all light escaping - my episode of hypomania with it. He jerks me forward and all bets are off. His breath pools with smoke, its heat enveloping my face. It's thick, reeking with an edge of sweet, oozing alcohol. The Brandy and Marlboros creep up my nose, my pores and my eyes. They water.

"I was with Rosalie." I whimper, the miniscule sound dropping between us, dropping as if it had never existed, leaving no trace. Jacob curls his fingers around the back of my neck, the tips pressing hard against a mark the size of my thumb. As his forefinger digs into my bruise, I cringe.

"What?" He spits, his eyes pools of black fury. No longer a shade of brown, they swim with apathy, anger and non-sobriety – the shade I've come to frequently see. I stare, caked in fear, into those coal eyes. I jumped in long ago, and now I'm drowning. Drowning without a savior in these black pools. "Talk to me." His smoky breath stings the rims of my eyes, instigating a filmy layer of tears.

"It was… a girls night…" I begin to sob and he yanks my right arm, gripping it until those fingers bore into bone and my spirit.

"Stop fucking crying. You always cry. Take your goddamn medication." He barks, and grips me harder. The pressure against my arm instigates slight pain, resurrecting the topography of bruises trailing my arm. Old battle wounds come to rise on another battlefield of drunken fury.

"I did." My tears and emotions spill down my cheeks, my psychologically tainted brain nearing the peak of hysteria.

"I told you to stop crying." He roars and retracts his hand to strike me across the face. My neck snaps back, my head recoiling from the blow as my skull cracks against the white wall. The force causes the walls to shiver, maybe from what it has witnessed this past year. A picture frame trembles before falling from the nail and shattering into a hundred, glittering pieces. I stare, vision blurred, hot tears streaming down my cheeks, at the broken pile of beauty. I feel pity for the broken frame, pity that the glass lies on the floor, shattered. Pity that the damage is beyond repairing. Pity that we are exactly the same.

"Look what you did." Jacob rages and slams me against the wall. It shivers once more. I squeeze my eyes shut and escape. Another smack - sing an internal song, Bella. Another punch - think of sunshine, Bella. Another blow - think of happiness, Bella. Outside these walls, nobody knows. Think of anything, Bella. Anything.

"_Bella," Rosalie snaps her fingers in my face. "Wake up." Her sparkling blue eyes crackle in front of me, so alive in comparison to Jacob's deadened pools of rage._

"_I am awake." I pull my jacket tighter against my chest._

"_No, you're not." She gazes at me solemnly. I stare hard at my best friend, daring her to place her finger on it. Daring her to unravel my dark cryptology. She blinks once and slowly reaches into her purse to fish out her pack of cigarettes._

"_I'm fine." The lie slips easily through my teeth, just as it repeatedly has over the past year. She narrows her eyes at me before gently placing a cigarette between her perfect lips. It pokes out the side of her mouth, the September breeze nipping at our faces._

"_Is it your medication?" She finally issues as her thumb strikes the wheel of the green lighter. There's a click but no flame._

"_Yes," I lie once more. She attempts the lighter again, and this time, the end of her cigarette burns. "It's been giving me headaches." She exhales smoke lazily, but it's blown away by the biting wind. I cross my arms to brace the cold, but wince as I inadvertently press against the moderately sized bruise on my chest._

"_Get a new prescription." Rose suggests and blows a small stream of smoke up into the bleak sky._

"_Maybe I will." I murmur, but the words float away with the wind. Beyond our park bench, there are two young girls playing in a red sandbox. One, a rosy-cheeked girl with blonde pigtails waves her plastic shovel in the air. The other, her comrade, peals in giggles as her brunette ponytail bobs up and down._

"_That was like us." My best friend says softly. I can feel her concerned gaze on me as the marks on my body throb. What have I become? My body, a canvas, has been painted black and blue by an artist of rage. I close my eyes._

"_It was." I sift through the memories of my childhood, my innocence. I can't recall the last time I wore anything revealing my limbs. I watch in envy as the carefree brunette in the sandbox rolls up her checkered sleeves to receive a bucket of sand from her friend._

"_Bella…" Rose flicks the end of her cigarette. ""You can tell me anything. You know that." I turn to stare at my best friend and dare her to decode me once more. The bruise underneath my jaw line is beginning to fade, but I feel her sparkling eyes bore into it. I'm clumsy. She buys this excuse every time. Dread creeps up my body as there is silence, and I wonder if she's decoded my secret at long last._

"_Today is your birthday." She finally whispers sadly and I am rammed. Enlightened, in fact. After swimming in a pool of darkness, you begin to lose notion of birthdays and petty things not pertaining to preventing a right hook or an uppercut. Today, courtesy of Rose's noting, is my twenty-first birthday. If I had turned 21 a year ago, I would go out with my girl friends. I would wear a pretty dress with pretty shoes. I would drink until I had to get my stomach pumped. My eyes would sparkle like Rosalie's and the girls in the sandbox. _

"_Oh." I feel tears well up in my eyes. Damn it._

"_You forgot, didn't you? Oh, Bells, don't cry. Don't worry. Don't you worry one bit about forgetting, okay?" She stubs out her cigarette and wraps her slender arms around my neck. I sniffle and nod. She thinks it's my bipolar disorder, that I'm some psychologically imbalanced, artistic outcast. What she doesn't know, along with everyone else, is that it's because of him. Him._

"_Let's go out tonight, okay? Just you and me, it'll be a girls night on the town. You're twenty-one!" She chippers into my ear, but Jacob's face of anger, his black eyes, flash through my mind and I tense._

"_I don't… know…" I trail._

"_Oh, come on. Just one night. I never see you anymore. You can see Jacob after – I won't bring Emmett… It'll just be us." I think of Emmett, the burly, teddybear boyfriend Rose has claimed. He sparks with life too, always cracking jokes and grinning that signature grin. He and Rose are healthy, both of them my best friends outside of Jacob's white walls._

"_I really have to ask Jake." I bite my lip._

"_Why? What's he going to do?" She scowls. _Anything from a shove to a soccer punt,_ I think. "Please, Bella. I never see you anymore." Rosalie begs. I lightly curl my fingers around her slim arm and for a flash of time, I somehow think this will give me back my old life. Watching sappy films, stuffing our faces with popcorn and packing the occasional sixer was the extent of our weekends. Now? The only thing I have time for is drowning._

"_I'll just leave him a message…" I squeeze my eyes shut and a wave of potential repercussions washes through my mind._

"_That's the Bella I know."_

"Look at me," Jacob clenches my jaw with his palm. I gaze into his black eyes, crying all the while. "And stop crying." His words sting caustically, causing my eyes to overflow even more.

"I can't." I squeeze them shut.

"Then tell me something." He growls and slams my head against the wall for a third time. I tremble from the impact, my eyes still closed. "Why are you so fucking worthless?" I inhale and exhale calmly, albeit the severity of my quivering.

"I'm not worthless." I finally whisper, exasperated.

"What'd you say?" He slurs and releases my jaw. I grasp it, my burning skin hot against my fingers. "Are you disrespecting me?"

"No," I open my eyes to find his lip curled back. "I –" But his hand strikes my face once more. My left eyebrow burns as the swelling instigates, my fingers instinctively trying to cover the hurt.

"Shut up, Bella. You're fucked up. I don't know why I'm with you." Something within me snaps and I'm enveloped in boiling fury. I'm suddenly so exhausted, so exhausted from equaling close to nothing in his dark apartment. I shove, hard, against his chest.

"Good, because I'm leaving you. And I mean it this time." I choke through my tears and slap at him. His fist reaches my eye the moment my palm falls. Packed with more force than the slaps, I reel backward and the majority of my left shoulder blade absorbs the brunt from the wall. I yelp.

"If you leave me, I will kill you." He threatens, the alcoholic breath heating my swollen eye even further. It crusts shut and I slink toward the eastern side of the room.

"You say that every time." I shriek through my tears and feel my way across the wall.

"And this time, I mean it." He roars and sloppily stumbles after me.

"I'm calling the police." I counter hysterically and push off the wall, running toward the center of room. Heightened by a sense of urgency, I cry to myself as I pray that I'll somehow find the portable phone.

"Get back here." He attempts to run but slams into the backside of the sofa. Jacob slips on the hardwood floors, crashing onto his side but scrambling up just as quickly. I sprint, my left hand clutching my face. I reach the side table and outstretch my right hand for the phone before I'm caught. He yanks my hair, pulling me backward and flinging me onto the floor.

"You crazy bitch," He roars and the bottom of his foot cracks against my ribs. I curl up instinctively and squeeze my eyes shut. "You're so unstable. Don't be irrational, Bella. We just know it's because you're mental." He grunts as his foot maintains a pattern. I cry silently, in the dark, as my eyes stay closed. Everything becomes blurred, and as I quasi-comatosely flutter my eyes open, my world is distorted and surreal as my entire body succumbs to Jacob's blows. I float in and out, catatonically, crying and trying to piece together if I'm dead or alive at this point. Maybe I really am drowning.

There is a window of time where I forget what happens. I don't remember when I started to cough up blood, nor do I remember when I forgot the rhythm of his blows against me. I don't remember when, who or how the police were called. I don't remember them cuffing a muttering Jacob, nor do I remember Rosalie holding me, crying. I don't remember the blue and red of the sirens, or them strapping me onto a gurney. I don't remember the crowds of people on the street, staring, their hands over their mouths. Nor do I remember the ambulance paramedic dabbing at her eyes as she stared at what he had done. During this window of time, I drift in and out of reality.

"_Wake up, Bella_." Rose said earlier today at the park.

"_Shut up, Bella._" Jacob roars in my head.

"Wake up, Bella." A disconnected voice floats through my head as my eyes struggle for consciousness. For a second, I witness hospital surroundings pass in a blur as I'm wheeled away on the gurney. Faces hover, all blurred, all unknown. And then I go under again. I float, wondering if I'm still on Earth or somewhere else.

"She needs surgery, Doctor." Another voice wafts through my disconnected atmosphere and I am suddenly surrounded by buzzing; the voices, the sounds of the hovering faces. I wouldn't call it darkness. Colors explode: cerulean, magenta, neon yellow and orange as I continue to float somewhere in the land of surrealism. My eyes crack open once more, for just enough time to see them place a respirator over my face.

"We'll fix you. " A middle-aged nurse promises softly as my half-opened eye meets her gaze. _No, you can't,_ a voice from within sighs. I fall back under. There are so many moments where lucidity completely escapes me. In the land of surrealism, a plethora of thoughts ram me. Round one of my distorted thoughts is Jacob approaching me a year ago, his eyes brown and crinkled. _Bella, don't be afraid_. He smiles lovingly and holds his palm out. That autumn afternoon, at the sidewalk café, I took his hand. I didn't know what I was getting myself into, and as he squeezed my hand, he smiled, the September wind ruffling his dark locks. _I don't know what you'd do if you left me,_ he assuages. And for a fraction of a second, I wonder if this is truly the man who hurt to my exhausted disappointment, his eyes flash to coal and those fingers curl up into a fist. _I said, don't be afraid._ He growls and makes contact with my nose. My one, un-swollen eye flies open to note the fluorescent lighting on the ceiling.

Round two is Rosalie from junior year of high school. She sits, cross-legged on her rug, a flask of peppermint-schnapps running down her throat. She giggles and gives me the finger. _Let's see a movie tonight, Bells._ She tipsily suggests and tilts her seventeen-year old head. Her two braids drape over her shoulders as she readjusts her blouse. My seventeen-year old self sits with her, giggling right along and throwing my head back, oblivious to life. Life at seventeen is nothing. Simple, pure, the only damage we were doing to ourselves was drinking Coors Light on a Friday or experimenting with Jessica Stanley's older brother's new bong. _Hey, Bella_, she smiles and tugs at her Trojan Varsity Soccer jacket. _You're my best friend_, She places Charlie's flask back at her lips._ I would never let anyone hurt you, ever. I promise you. Nobody._

Round three is my parents' faces hovering over me. The crease in my father's forehead is deepened and under the buzzing of the lights, I can trace the lines on my mother's face. The kitchen light is overwhelmingly bright as they peer deep into my eyes. I then realize that my parents look younger – Charlie with his full head of dark hair and Renee with her less crinkled face. _We're getting a divorce_. Charlie touches my shoulder gently. His police badge depicts the irony of it all. _Honey, it has nothing to do with you… You mean everything to us._ Renee whispers and I flash forward, eleven years later – still the ten-year old girl sitting alone in that kitchen chair.

Round four is not surrealism, but in fact, reality. My eye cracks open, and I see a blonde doctor, his brow furrowed. He wears a white surgical mask as he tries so hard to fix me. The light above burns my eyes as I float atop the table. I feel nothing, but the colors explode in my vision once more as the blue-eyed surgeon fights a battle for a girl he doesn't know. An aura of light surrounds this savior whose finally come to save me from drowning. He works on my insides, myself open and exposed. His gloved hand is outstretched, awaiting the utensils which his nurses slap into his palm. Metallic prods and scissors enter and exit his hands at a furious rate, causing me to wonder how battered I am internally. I go under again and don't come back up until the colors fade into darkness.

My eye flutters and I choke slightly, emitting a cough which is numbed. My ragged breathing is thunderous against my ears, and I have to blink several times to intake my surroundings. I am in a hospital bed. The walls are white, the ceiling is white, the floors are white. A small, black wall television is mounted on the wall in the middle of the room. Another bed sits parallel to my own, mine being closer to the door, and my irregular breathing is the only noise. I feel nothing, my body numb, as I lightly finger the nasal oxygen tube protruding from my nostrils. My left eye remains somewhat swollen, yet the heat, the pain is gone. I vaguely remember hearing my ribs cracking before I went under, and I don't dare touch that vicinity. I silently thank anesthesiology. My white hospital bracelet catches my eye and it splays my full name and date of birth; today, twenty-one years ago. I should be in here for taking twenty-one shots. That should be the reason. However, my gaze trails, and to my mortification, my bruises are exposed. They erupt in a sickening glow against my pallid skin, the buzzing, fluorescent lights not aiding my situation. My hospital gown hardly covers anything, and my eyes begin to well at the physical and external evidence of my hurt. My head torpidly turns to its side and I can vaguely make out another person in the bed parallel to mine. Only several steps away from me, I want to call out to them, but they don't seem real. I let it drop, but gaze curiously at the silhouette of my roommate. Their blanket is pulled up to their neckline, and they face away from me, their mass of hair spilling onto the white pillow. I distractedly avert my gaze to my bruised arm and remember that I'm supposed to cry.

So I do.

I cry until I have nothing left. My chest aches, albeit my anesthesiology. I'm cracked from head to toe, broken into a million different pieces, just as the picture frame. I hiccup severely in accordance to my tears and wallow. Vacillating between normality and a major depressive episode, I do what any mental patient would: blame myself. Had I told Rose rather than dared her to decode me, I wouldn't be here. I would be in my bed, possibly with another man. A man who wouldn't dare touch me. I'd be strong like my mother, have the courage to look my father in the eye. My wardrobe would consist of t-shirts and shorts, not hoodies and sweats. I wouldn't have to hide in a glass case and I could proudly say that I was in love with a man who loved me back. But there's no room for love when you hide in a glass case – there are two things you can do with it. Admire it and then break it. Jacob did just that.

My IV bag fights to replenish my lost fluidity, and after time ticks by, it is finally empty. I gaze at it and exhale loudly.

"Press the button." A muffed voice permeates the atmosphere. I torpidly turn my head on my pillow and swallow. My throat is dry, sticky and parched.

"What?" I croak in a whisper.

"The red button to your right. Press it." The voice continues. I glance upward to my right and see a button on the wall. It's level to my intravenous bag and I sigh. It hurts my chest.

"It's too high." I respond to the voice. I don't bother asking who they are; I've accepted delirium long ago. There is a loud sigh and shuffling from the corner of the room. My gaze trails downward, slowly, as I am trapped in my broken body. When they finally reach a leveled center, I gasp lightly. My roommate, who was once facing away from me, now stares from across the room. His blanket is still draped up to his neckline, but a set of beautiful, emerald eyes peer at me. Those eyes are laden within a face. A perfect, flawless face. A tired, haunted face. He has a sloped nose, high cheekbones and a chiseled jaw line. But none of these hold my attention like his crop of hair. He has jutted bronze hair, sticking this way and that from beneath the bandage that winds around his head. It's thick and a shade I've never seen before, glorious and imperfectly perfect. His left cheek nestles against his pillow when he gazes at me, and for a moment, I forget my hurt. I instinctively want to brush my hair back or bite my lip, but this is when I remember. _Fuck you, Jacob_. I think to myself as I gaze at the man in the other bed. _Fuck you for fucking me over. Twice._ A swollen eye is attractive. So are bruises.

"Oh." He says simply and nestles his cheek even further so that one green eye peers out at me. His bronze locks sway slightly as he shifts into a more comfortable position.

"I can't… I can't really move." I whisper and wince. My pallid arm, caked with my evidential pain, involuntarily moves to my ribcage. My fingers brush lightly, slowly across my blanket.

"Well," His voice is fluid, yet there is an edge of sadness to it. "Who is your doctor?"

I close my eyes. "I don't know." I croak. My breathing is shallow and after a moment, I hear a loud beep. I crack my swollen eye open to find the red button on his side of the room glowing. He now stares at the ceiling vacuously. I gape at this miniscule act of geniality and the man in the other bed. After a moment, a nurse glides into the room. She strides and fluffs the back of her hair, placing a beaming grin onto her face.

"How may I help you?" She reaches the end of his bed but he continues to gaze at the ceiling. "Sir?" She interlaces her fingers and places her clasped hands at the base of her stomach. No response. He blinks once but continues to gaze at nothing.

"Miss…" I whisper and she turns toward me. "Could you… Fill this?" I point my finger toward the IV bag in all my frailty.

"Sure, honey. I'll get your doctor." She smiles, shining, a healthy smile. I can hardly form one of my own. The moment she shuts the door behind her, my roommate shifts from the corner of my eye.

"Jesus." I swallow dryly.

"You won't be as parched when you get a new bag." He says monotonously and I shut my eyes.

"Bella!" Rosalie bursts through the door, several nurses trailing to restrain her. She has tears running down her face, ruining her mascara and at the bang, my roommate stirs slightly.

"Miss –" The nurses struggle, but Rose fends them off.

"Bella," Her voice cracks and she begins to sob. "Oh my God, Bella. Bella…" She reaches me and I can see that her blue eyes are red, glazed and rimmed with her running makeup. She sniffles severely and tugs at her jacket collar, kneeling when she approaches my side.

"Excuse me-" A nurse quips and Rose snaps her head toward her.

"Please excuse _yourself_. Give me a moment." She hisses and turns her head toward me. I feel her gaze rake across my body and every centimeter her eyes trek, the quicker the tears run from her eyes. "Oh God…" She chokes and wipes an eye with the back of her hand.

"Don't worry about me." I whisper raggedly, struggling to speak.

"I'll kill him," Her eyes blaze. "I called a lawyer."

"Oh," I say inaudibly and attempt to smile weakly. "Thank you."

"Bella…" Her voice cracks as she brushes a lock of hair from my face.

"What time is it?" I ask lightly.

"6 AM." She whispers and sniffles. At this moment, the door flings open, and the blonde doctor from my distortion becomes reality. He tucks his clipboard underneath his arm and fiddles with a purple pen before gliding toward me.

"Hello, Isabella." My savior says softly. He clicks the pen and clears his throat lightly. Rose snaps her head up to gaze at this doctor, yet from the corner of my eye, I detect my roommate turning to face away from us.

"Bella." I croak inaudibly."

"Bella." Rose confirms for me.

"Bella, then," The doctor smiles warmly. "I'm Dr. Cullen." I struggle to smile but close my eyes in exhaustion. Not before seeing my roommate go rigid for unexplained reasons.

"Hello." I whisper.

"Bella, Emmett is outside." Rose brushes her fingers across my forehead.

"Bella," Dr. Cullen clears his throat. "How are you feeling?" I slowly open my eyes and inhale shakily.

"Dead."

"We'll fix you right up," He beams and I close my eyes once more. "Would you like to do know what happened?"

There is silence before Jacob's face flashes across my mind. I whimper and there is shuffling around the room. "I know what happened." I tense and Rosalie shushes me.

"You broke three ribs, Bella. You also needed surgery… You suffered a punctured lung and a chipped shoulder blade. Severe concussion, facial swelling and…" He clears his throat. "Contusions."

"No shit." Rosalie hisses and I slowly flutter my eyes open.

"Oh." The noise drops from the hair.

"I'm placing you on Orthoxycol and Vicodin for the pain, Bella. And of course, your Lamictal." Doctor Cullen scrawls on his clipboard.

"Lamictal?" Rose furrows her brow.

"My bipolar medication." I whisper and she nods vigorously.

"Oh, right, right." She strains a smile. The doctor drones on, and I want to listen, I really do. But I can't. My only focus is the hurt.

"I called Charlie." Rose impedes my thoughts. She averts her gaze downward and my heart rams against me. Charlie?

"No," I whisper and my heart rate monitor increases. _Beep, beep, beep_. The green line jags up and down and the nurses huff about. "Not Charlie." She hangs her head and continues to sniffle.

"I had to." Rose bites her lip and hastily tucks her platinum hair behind both ears. My roommate stirs more from the corner of my eye and I moan slightly.

"Charlie… Charlie will… Die." My voice cracks and my eyes well.

"Babe, he had to know." She wipes her eyes and lightly places a hand onto my blanketed bed. I gaze into the eyes of my best friend, the one person who gives a damn. Tears spill down, silently, as she bunches my blanket into a fist. The nurses stare, wordlessly, but I know they're staring at the bruises. The doctor stares, that forlorn clipboard in his hands. And finally, I turn my head to the other side of the room. But he doesn't stare. He stares at the ceiling, no life in those beautiful eyes. He stares, drifting away, floating off into his own world of hurt.

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**Don't flame for the sadness. Hope you all like it :)**

**Happy reading, guys! **

**kisses, JennyCullen44**


	2. Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd

**Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight**

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**"**_**Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence." -** __**Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi**_

The drugs are lovely. So very, very lovely. They wrap around you, fitting into the niches of your body, curling into you like a lover on a cloudy day. Sensations of exploding warmth waft from your toes to your center, spreading and fanning itself. You are immobilized, yet immobilized by the sleepy caress of your new best friend. A blanket of sleep stretches lazily across your eyelids, painting a smile, tiny and quaint, before you depart rationality. You recede, sans pain, sans anything, into the realm of unconsciousness. You are that tiny dot on the horizon perspective of a painting, the landmark atop that hill miles away, the balloon, floating away, with no one to hold the string.

Yet with this comes the risk of not knowing what you'll get.

Sometimes, it's surreal. The sky is violet, the grass weeps blue. Sometimes, it's so close to reality, you awake with a jerk. Sometimes, there are people. Rose, arriving in all age forms. Age five with pigtails and overalls. Age thirteen with her new shade of Strawberry Ice lip-gloss swiped on. Age seventeen with her new cartilage piercing. Age twenty-one with her running mascara and bleary, blue eyes. Charlie, just as in the photos, with his one-toothed, eight-year old grin. Charlie, walking toward me in his wedding tuxedo - only to tear it off and burn it. Charlie, pulling out his pistol and threatening the sky that he'll avenge his baby. Renee visits sometimes, cloaked in reality and surrealism depending on the dosage. Emmett's been there, usually cracking jokes, trying to assuage the Rosalie with the mascara still running down her cheeks. Professor Esme has been there, holding a paintbrush in her delicate fingers, telling me to sweep the bristles. Close your eyes and sweep. Over and over again. _Why?_ I'd asked her. _Pour oublier_. She responded with a smile in her native tongue. _To forget what? To forget what, Professor? _And when _he_ appears, the nurses have to come in and restrain my screaming. They shush me, wiping the hair from my face with cool, tired fingers. I grip the sides of the bed, rocking back and forth until the blonde doctor comes in. Doctor Cullen usually lays me back to sleep, mentioning a thing or two about Ambien, benzodiazepines and rehabilitation. And then I'm back on my way to another episode of drug-induced, subconscious adventures.

Because after Charlie visited, all I've wanted is to forget.

"_Bella," He gruffly says. "Jesus Christ, Isabella." His voice drops to the lowest decibel the moment he enters the room. My father stands there, his eyes boring into the battered frame of his only child. They rake over every bruise, every cut, every piece of hurt. Scattered in shambles, I manage to see his eyes prick before I witness this: Charlie, my father, Charlie, the cop, Charlie, the man still in love with Renee, crumbles. His knees buckle and he drops onto his hands, staring at the glowing white of the linoleum tile. _

"_Dad," I whisper, the tears welling. "I still love you." A nurse places her hands on his shoulder blades, soothing him with incoherent mumbles. The dam breaks and I clutch my scratchy blanket, sobbing and falling back into that pit of darkness._

"_I love you. I always have," He says quietly and doesn't meet my eye. "But it wasn't enough." I shake, my chest trembling and exploding with pain._

"_But it was, Dad. It was." I sputter and a nurse hustles over to me. _

"_No," He shakes his head and slowly rises from the floor. "Look at you. I wish you could see yourself, Isabella." Just as everyone else, he stares at the bruises. The sickening buzzing of the fluorescent lights taunt me, giddily singing and deeming me weak._

"_I'm okay." I lie for the umpteenth time. It slips through easily, my tears continuing to spill._

"_I'll kill the son of a bitch." He growls, that familiar flash of anger entering my own father's eyes._

"_Stop," I sob. "Stop it. Make it leave." I bunch the fabric of the blanket over my face and squeeze my eyes shut. When I finally uncover my face, his eyes are brimming with apology._

"_I'm so sorry, Bella. I'm so sorry." He whispers and cautiously walks toward my bed. He lightly places a hand on my bed and slowly, carefully, lowers himself onto the floor. Without breaking my gaze, his eyes close._

"_Dad." I place my hand over his. I can feel the aging in his hand, the cracks and rough barrier around my father. My fingers curl around his and my peripheral IV does too, the catheter moving with it and the tape around my wrist straining. The intravenous tube snaking out of my hand grazes his arm slightly._

"_Bella." Is all he says before he wraps his arm around me gingerly. He presses me to him, so lightly as if I'm now his porcelain daughter. The moisture seeping into the right shoulder of my hospital gown sets me off as well. The first time I see Charlie cry, and I can do nothing, for I'm blinded by my own stint of tears._

My roommate doesn't stare when the nurses wipe my face. He doesn't stare when Doctor Cullen flashes that cheery smile before injecting yet another syringe into my intravenous drip. He doesn't stare when they bring me my blue tablets of Lamictal in a plastic cup. He doesn't stare when I have a new visitor, crying and falling to that linoleum floor. He doesn't stare when I wake up screaming. He doesn't stare when I fold into myself and simply cry. And most of all, he doesn't stare at the bruises. He is the only one who doesn't stare. I like to think he's extending me a courtesy, but I really don't know.

He has a different doctor, always muttering something about catatonia and severe depression. "Catatonic depression." His balding doctor confers to a nurse seconds after I awake from a drug-induced dream. She nods solemnly and they both glance at my roommate. He stares at the ceiling.

…..

"How long have I been here?" I ask a blonde nurse one time. Emmett has a chair pulled up and he flicks through the wall television with the remote. My roommate is asleep.

"One day, dear." She smiles before hooking another saline bag onto the pole. _One day?_ I blink rapidly.

"It seems so much longer," I whisper. "Like a week." She brushes her hands against her skirt.

"No, 24 hours." She chippers and turns around. I blink.

"Go, Mariners." Emmett strains a grin as the television flicks grey with a shot of Safeco Field and downtown Seattle's skyline. The stadium is basked in sunshine, a rarity, as the announcer reels off the lineup. I attempt to smile weakly.

"Hope they don't get any errors." I whisper.

"Let's hope not." He says quietly. But he's not looking at the television. We watch in silence as the first inning commences, him occasionally pulling at his jacket collar or ruffling those dark curls. I run a finger across my catheter and sleepily watch the sport I used to love. That is, until my old life slipped through my battered fingers. Moments pass as Emmett cracks jokes, my roommate sleeps and I cease to give a shit.

"Oh, Miss Swan," A nurse flits into the room. I glance up slowly, Emmett with me. We gaze at her, for there is a wheelchair placed in front of her. Her thin fingers grasp the handles and I whimper. "You had CT scans, so now you need an MRI." She glances at the empty wheelchair seat and I close my eyes.

"How am I supposed to get into that?" I croak.

"I can help." Emmett rises from his seat and places the remote onto the stand. They gently peel the blanket from my body, folding it back to reveal my sickly legs. They're gaunt, so thin and awkward that I'm momentarily enveloped in horror. Worn and emaciated, my kneecaps jut from beneath my pallid skin as there is nothing there. Skin and bones. Bruised skin and bones. Violet, black, blue and paste white, the fluorescent lights place them on display. They've hidden for too long behind sweats, and I once again, begin to cry. I'm still crying when Emmett gently cradles me into the wheelchair seat, and as I'm wheeled out of the room, my chest aches. My friend carries my IV pole alongside me as the blur of hospital surroundings flash by again. And once in the radiation room, I lie helpless. On the scanner, I am motionless, and even if I had a desire to move, I sure as hell couldn't. Emmett waits outside as I undergo the long, tedious procedure of an MRI. My head enters the scanner and I close my eyes. The quantum mechanical properties and all that lovely proton activity commence, causing a whirring noise. I fall asleep to the beat of the hospital's heartbeat.

…..

Very rarely are there no nurses or doctors in our room. And these are the times, far and few, where my roommate slips from his "catatonic" façade. He usually stirs, fiddling with something or changing the wall television to the Food Network. Yet this time, he turns to me.

"They really shouldn't give you that high of a dosage." He turns to face me after hours of being a statue. I'd just downed my tablets of Lamictal, and the moment the nurse and Emmett left, he sat upright. I glance, exhaustedly, at him. The MRI session drained the sliver of energy I once possessed.

"Why?" I croak warily.

"It suppresses you too much." He wraps his blanket around him and I note how lovely his face is. He has a new bandage around his head, but that blanket still sits stubbornly on his neckline.

"The prophylaxis of bipolar disorder is too much? Suppressing? At least it doesn't trigger the mania and all that good stuff." I sigh, painfully, and close my eyes.

"Precisely. The prophylaxis is all in good fun, yes. But keep in mind that lithium citrate was around years before the FDA approved your lamotrigine there." My eyes flash open. _Smart, too_, I think to myself.

"So what are you saying? That I need to stick to old school?" I whisper and torpidly clutch my stomach in slight pain. Our eyes stay locked, and I somehow find a haven in those green orbs.

"Yes. Your brain is just a sea of antidepressants right now." He purses his lips and once again, buries half his face into the pillow.

"It always has been." I sigh.

He grimaces slightly and closes his eyes. "Just ask them to reduce your dosage. It shouldn't be that high."

"How do you know all this?" I furrow my brow, my left eye still crusted shut.

"Well, you have bipolar disorder, according to your medication." He murmurs.

"Oh… right. But…" I trail. "Nevermind." I bite my lip and exhale.

"It's nice to know we have something in common." He issues flatly.

"And what would that be?"

"I'm clinically depressed. Nice to meet you." He gazes at me, no humor in those eyes. They're laced with memories of melancholia, and I don't dare to ask. Rather, I take a different approach.

"Manic depression is cooler." I joke.

"Cooler," He muses to himself. "That may be." The corner of his lip twitches, causing a tiny capsule of happiness to break open within me. He has a face meant to smile.

"And maybe they think I'm crazy." I sigh and mimic him in nestling half my face into the pillow.

"It's okay. They think I'm crazy too." His lip twitches once more as he gazes at me. I can't help but strain a smile.

"Why? Because you're catatonic around medical personnel?" I darkly muse.

"That," Humor cakes his tone. "Is only because I choose to be."

"And why is that?" I croak and blink once, slowly.

"Because it's bullshit. Pardon my language, Miss…"

"Bella," I sigh. "But, they're trying to save you, Mister…" I refute and idly trace my catheter.

"Edward," He says fluidly, perfectly. Sadly. "And I don't need to be saved, Miss Bella." His tone is edged, dull. I grip my wrist.

"Why don't you need to be saved? Why are you even in here?" I prod and he shuts those eyes.

"I don't want to be saved. But that landed me in here, didn't it?" I needn't say more, but I continue to gaze at this miserable stranger. He gazes back, wordlessly, and I shut my eyes.

"How do you know all that stuff about manic depression?" I ask inaudibly.

"I just do." He says simply. The Mariners game continues to flash in my peripheral vision. There is a low round of cheers emitted from the television as Seattle hits a double.

"How?" I repeat stubbornly. _Lopez making his way around 3__rd__, running for home. There he goes, there he goes!_ The announcer drones distantly in my left ear.

"What'd you get on your Rorschach test?" He demands. I wheeze once, coughing before composing myself.

"How do you know about the inkblot test?"

"I told you. They think I'm crazy too, remember?" He flashes a wicked smile, and disregarding the darkness of it, that capsule of happiness reopens.

"Well, I didn't get anything sinister but they'd rather not call me sane. If anything, they deemed me artistic." I croak and bury my face into the pillow.

"Of course." His muffled voice reaches me.

"Of course what?" I speak into the scratchy pillow.

"Manic depressives, or those suffering from bipolar disorder, tend to have vast, artistic capabilities." I lift my head to gaze at him, careful not to graze my eye.

"How do you know that –"

"Are you in college?" He begins to sit upright.

"Y-Yes –" I whisper, but he cuts me off.

"What's your major?"

"Art –"

"There you go." There is silence as he gathers the blanket into his lap.

"And what did you get on your Rorschach test?" I strain.

"Depression." He says simply and lets the blanket fall from around him. The only noise left is the baseball game, and even that is silent. The silence eats away at my eyes, the tubes in my body, Melky Cabrera and the New York Yankees on the television, and the space between my bed and his. But I know it eats him too. Bandages wind around his arms, spanning from wrist to mid-forearm. They're soiled, bloodied and heartbreaking. The silence may eat him, but his own abundance of hurt screams so loudly that no one can hear a single decibel.

…..

I've received flowers and teddy bears. But the next person to visit brings a different gift. My college professor stands in the doorframe, shuffling her feet and glancing at the ceiling. Her caramel hair is wound in that familiar bun, and I nearly cry of joy. A second maternal figure to me, I grin. My doctor has a brief chat with her and he smiles more than usual.

"Bella," He leads her toward my bed. "You have another visitor. Miss Popular." The blonde doctor beams and adjusts his tie.

"Hello, dear," Professor Esme croons softly. "I had to get over here as quickly as I could."

"I'll leave you two." Doctor Cullen flickers that smile.

"Oh, it was lovely to meet you, Carlisle." My professor blushes. I blush for her as well.

"A pleasure, Esme." He nods and lightly places a hand on her shoulder. And for unexplained reasons, my roommate pops an eye open to ogle. He rolls that eye before shutting it again and I gape.

"Goodbye." She chirps meekly. He nods and turns to leave before lingering half a second too long.

As soon as the door is shut, I swallow dryly. "Bella," She turns to me and clutches a brown portfolio to her chest. "Oh, child. Oh, darling." She says softly and gently falls to her knees.

"Esme…" I trail and plead with my eyes. I've had enough of tears.

"I should have known," She shakes her head. "I should have known."

"No, you shouldn't have," I whisper. "No one knew."

"I knew there wasn't something right with you." Her voice cracks as she places a hand over my catheter.

"It's okay." I issue the lie, as I always have.

"Darling," She whispers, speaking so softly it's as if I really am porcelain. "I brought you your work." My gaze trails downward to her portfolio then back up to her.

"Thank you." I tremble.

"You were a wonderful student. Astounding, Bella. You could have gone somewhere with this." She continues in whispers and I shut my eyes. The tears leak through regardless. When I reopen them, my portfolio is opened, splaying my paintings. They're stacked neatly and meticulously, the painting of top being one of Rosalie. Typical. She beckons for me to take it, and carefully, gingerly, I hold my paintings. I thumb through them, pausing to smile at a few. The first one, Rose with oversized sunglasses, lies in her family's backyard in a bikini. She splays on the towel, her knees curled up and her hair spilling around her head. She smiles slightly, potentially unaware at the time I was sketching her. Her hand is in her hair, and she appears to be posing in that itsy bitsy teeny weeny black bikini. Yet she was asleep – a moment in time. A person having a pure moment, unguarded, shields retracted, walls crumbled.

Another painting is Jessica Stanley. She has her ankles crossed, those heels awkwardly bent on the sidewalk. Her right hand clutches her peacoat closer to her as her left palm holds a packet of cigarettes. One pokes out the side of her mouth and the city's wind plays around her curled hair. Her brow is furrowed slightly, a hint of irritation overcoming her countenance, as she is engrossed in conversation with Mike Newton. He too, appears somewhat irritated, and the tip of his nose is rosy from the wind. Locks of blonde hair rise with the wind as his hand lightly grazes her knee. They're leaning into one another, albeit the depicted animosity of their conversation. I'd drawn them, afar, a night where I was allowed out. Of course, I couldn't escape animosity, even if I dug a hole to China.

I continue to flip through my paintings, smiling at the story behind each of them. _Because every painting has a story,_ Professor Esme once said to me. _Don't you think their story deserves to be told?_ I count, internally, the amount of paintings in my portfolio. One is missing. I shut my eyes, tensing as the memory painting flashes through my mind. He was sitting at the kitchen table, reading the morning paper. He had bedhead, those dark locks un-brushed. His eyes were brown as he scanned the paper, an eyebrow raised slightly. It was a morning after – a time where I knew I was safe. I had a twenty-four hour safe zone. Because he felt guilt. There were times where remorse would flash across those black eyes, his fist still raised. After a blow, he'd snap out of a trance, gazing down in horror at me at the floor. I could count on him trying to attain some sort of penance. Some sort of fucking penance by placing his hand on the small of my back as we walked together on the sidewalk, or him paying for both dinner and a pretty trinket.

But the painting is missing, and as I meet my professor's gaze, I silently thank her. She squeezes my hand.

"Thank you." I whisper.

"Of course, Bella," She fiddles with her purse. "But I have something else for you." I cough once, my chest aching.

"Oh?"

"Here," She says softly and holds both hands out. In one palm is a paintbrush. The handle is a light brown shade of wood and the bristles are thick, black. In the other palm is a yellow, Number 2 pencil. "To make up for what you've lost."

For the missing painting? Or for more?

…..

"Can I see them?" My roommate scratches the back of his bandaged head. He has new, linen bandages around his arms and I gaze torpidly at him.

"See what?" I clear my throat.

"Your paintings." He turns his body to face me from across our space.

"They're not very good…" I bite my lip.

"Please?" His tone is sad and those green eyes brim with haunted visions.

"Fine." I sigh and slowly raise my arm to retrieve my portfolio sitting atop my nightstand.

"Oh," He mutters. "But I can't hold them." I stop to gaze at him.

"Why?" My fingers drum the edge of the stand and he tilts his head slightly.

"They don't let me touch anything these days." He says inaudibly and raises his arms.

"Oh." I retract my fingers to have them graze my blanket.

"Who are they of?" He blinks once.

"Friends, acquaintances, you know." I croak before coughing.

"Did you paint him?" His gaze bores into my eyes, not my skin, and a fluttering sensation flips my insides.

"What?" I whisper.

"Did you paint him?" He repeats solidly.

"I… Yes," I swallow dryly. "I painted him."

"Why? Because you thought that the man in the painting wasn't the man doing unspeakable things to you?" He demands, those eyes boring in.

"What –" Tears sting at my eyes and I clutch the blanket.

"Am I right? Did you think that his aura of innocence was enough to shackle him to a piece of paper? That he would never lash out and jump out of his frozen moment in time?" There is silence before an animalistic sound escapes my throat.

"Stop," I begin to sob. "Stop it."

"I'm sorry." He says quietly. I tremble in my bed, squeezing my eyes shut, the tears cascading down my cheeks.

"H-h-how… How did you k-know?" I hiccup and grip the blanket.

"Just because." He's inaudible.

"_How_?" I snap and wince from the pain.

"Let's just say, everyone has their fall from grace." I open my eyes to find him sitting upright, staring vacuously at the white linoleum.

"That's so vague." I reply angrily, sniffling.

"If you spend your life staring into a glass box, you always wonder what it's like on the inside. You peer into it, study it, observe it. You know everything on the exterior, but the interior is a mystery. And then one day, poof. You're on the inside. Here's the catch: the inside in a prison, Bella. You don't know how to claw your way out." He says softly, finally raising his eyes to meet my gaze.

"I've spent my life inside that box." I shut my eyes.

"And now you're on the outside." He murmurs.

"Because I have no choice. My box is shattered." I reopen them to stare at this mysterious man. This mysterious, beautiful man. This mysterious, beautiful, broken man.

"Well, my box has no key." He gazes right back, ignoring the bruises. He gazes at me, trying to unravel, or rather, fit the pieces of my shattered glass box back together. He spills the contents onto the table and commences in puzzling the broken bits back together.

* * *

**I'm going to die of exhaustion! Bah! Sleepy time...**

**Well, I hope you like it. Thanks for reading!**

**Happy Memorial Day :)**

**kisses, JennyCullen44**


	3. Mercy Me by Alkaline Trio

**Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight. Nor do I own that poem. That's called Pride by Dahlia Ravikovitch**

* * *

**_"Depression is nourished by a lifetime of ungrieved and unforgiven hurts." - Penelope Sweet_**

I've grown to learn that Edward is deft. He's cunning and brilliant and so cynical that he's a critic's dreamboat. A critic regarding life. Or, maybe, anyone. His tone is perpetually laced with sadness and a hint of melancholia. Throw in devastating looks, a streak of unattainable intelligence, a dash of sass and you will have Edward. Some may perceive it as angst, but I've already drowned in that pool. Only to be resuscitated into a hydrophobic ICU of lingering pain. A second is a minute in here, and to beat the callous mockery of Time, I ride on the coattails of his sharp tongue. And a tiny feeling in the pit of my belly is maturing, for it is increasingly difficult for me to deny that I'd love to taste that tongue as well… Hopefully it won't make me bleed. He delves into the flaws of society, seemingly the bitter guide to the flaws of mankind. His tongue is sharp, slicing intangible, flawed topics into shreds with his cynicism. So darkly eloquent and brilliant, they lull me into a budding blanket of security. To find comfort in his vendetta toward just about everything surely paints a bold message upon myself.

Poe is our bedtime story. Oh, how he loves his Poe. And one would think that such a dark, bumbling drunkard is surely no remedy for two instable, blackened folk such us as. But he is the muse and Edward is the siren. He does love his satires as well, Vonnegut being the particular _roi_ of that throne. But there is one snippet of enjambment poetry, one so simple, one so untainted by Poe's craft of darkness or Vonnegut's quirky satire that I dream of it.

_I tell you, even rocks crack, _

_And not because of age. _

_For years they lie on their backs_

_in the heat and the cold, _

_so many years, _

_it almost seems peaceful._

_They don't move, so the cracks stay hidden._

_A kind of pride._

_Years pass over them, waiting there._

_Whoever is going to shatter them _

_hasn't come yet._

_and so the moss flourishes, the seaweed_

_whips around,_

_the sea pushes through and rolls back –_

_the rocks seem motionless._

_Till a little seal comes to rub against them,_

_comes and goes away._

_And suddenly the rock has an open would._

_I told you, when rocks break, it happens by surprise._

_And people, too._

Doctor Cullen's benzodiazepines adore these poems. In that familiar land of surrealism, a dark figure pats a cushioned seat. I hesitantly follow and find that the shrouded chair displays my name, so I place my trust in such a petty claim and seat myself. Then, I'm off on the rocket wings of Ambien. A flash of light, a smile from someone unnamed, and I am by a sea. Seagulls cackle and a breeze floats, but there is no sun. A mass of green stirs and shifts around me, igniting my curiosity. And then I realize. The seaweed from Edward's poem caresses my cheeks with cool, tired tresses. Just as the nurses. They're emerald, the shade of Edward's eyes, as several of them whisper. They confide in one another the gossip of the girl sitting in a tide pool. I glance down to find my hair at my waist, it spilling and floating as an amorphous black.

"Shame." A leaf of seaweed coos and curls a tendril around my wrist.

"What's a shame?" I blink. I sit in the tide pool, my legs crossed, and gaze around me in the mass of the whispering seaweed.

"Shame." It repeats. Several brush my hair back, twisting the dripping length down the center of my back. My hospital gown hangs, drenched, down my rail-thin frame. The skirt billows in the water and I continue to stare at the greenery.

"I don't understand." I furrow my brow and dip my fingers beneath the surface of the water. At this point, the seaweed have erupted into sputtering giggles.

"Silly, girl, don't you see?" The original tendril coos and rubs against the bone in my wrist. "You're too pretty for this." I glance down at my arm to find it void of any contusions. My arm, the arm of my past, is glowing with life. My skin stretches across my bones, and suddenly, I'm not so emaciated. Fair-skinned not pallid, my body is smooth and sans pain. I gasp lightly.

"I –" I stutter and lift my hand from underneath the tide pool. Yet when I stretch my fingers to touch my arm, droplets of water spread. One falls, two falls, three. The moment they make contact, the droplets spread – to my horror. As they span the length of my arm, they greedily absorb the glow, the life and the Bella of my youth. My bones gradually jut out once more, my skin stretching so tightly over them that I think it will snap. I scream. "Make it stop." I shake my head as the droplets increase in size. They span up my arm, taking everything sitting upon my skeletal frame.

"Shame." The seaweed repeats and gently caresses my topography of bruises. And all the while, my hair continues to grow.

"Stop saying that." Tears sting my eyes as I attempt to rub the contusions off of my skin that is stretched far too tight.

"Shame." They all iterate in unison now. The whispering stops, yet the tendrils twisting my hair suddenly twist too hard.

"Stop." I beg and my fingertips reach the crown of my hair. But I don't hear the response as I'm yanked backward by my lengthy tresses. Water fills my ears as tears do my eyes, and I'm plunged into a world without sound. I glance frantically at the looming greenery before another tug and I'm underwater. Drowning.

I wake up screaming.

"Cut my hair." I demand hysterically and grip the railings of the bed. "Cut my hair." I shriek as the nurses sprint into the room. They brandish syringes with their saucer eyes and shush me with cool, tired fingers. I scream and lift the blanket over my eyes.

"Dear, dear." They shush through my polyester wall as I tremble.

"I want you," I blink through hot tears. "To cut my hair." There is a round of silence and after a bit of Time's mockery, I hesitantly lower the blanket. My eyes flicker to all of theirs.

"But –" One scratches her collar in a puzzled tone.

"Cut my hair." I grip the fabric to my battered chest and emit a choked cough. And then we all turn to the noise, for Edward sits upright in his bed, clapping. My left hand grips the blanket, the other the railing, as my chest heaves painfully. We stare at each other, the nurses returning the same, as he continues to clap - that cynical dreamboat defying my, his, our silence.

…..

And now, it's easier to sleep at night. It once trailed down the length of my back, tumbling in waves which possessed no shine. Splits ends and lackluster found a haven in my deadened locks, yet maybe it wasn't the absence of a good conditioner. Perhaps, life. People don't understand that you can be alive and lifeless all in the same token.

My new crop sits just above my collarbone now, serving as no boundary for my tossing and turning at night. Maybe once upon a time, I would have cared how the new haircut turned out. Now, it's the most beautiful gift I've received in over a year. The weight, the tangible and intangible, is gone. They hacked away at the vacuous pile of brown – my anchor. My reminder. He won't be able to pull me down farther than he already has now, for it's up to me to push up from the bottom. But do I have the strength in my legs? My heart? My mind? The pressure at the bottom of the ocean is enough to implode you. And it truly is very dizzying. Maybe I'll just lay on the bed of sand and condemn myself to eternal rest… It's dark enough down here to sleep forever, anyway.

Fuck the drugs. Fuck them, but God bless them. I drift into sub consciousness shortly after they cut my hair, and lo and behold, I'm at the bottom of the ocean. Trenches spew steam exceeding a specific heat in which we all learn at one point in biology as eerie reefs sway. My eyes adjust to the darkness, squinting in desperation. Silence spans across the ocean floor, as does pseudo-blackness. I look up, hoping to see a breach of sunlight, only to find more layers of ocean black. I'd take space any day. Feeling exhausted with my looming environment, I attempt to swim upward. And to no surprise, I can't: I'm anchored via ankle. A thick chain entwines itself around my ankle, pressing just a bit too tight. I scowl, exasperated with my subconscious _and _conscious misfortunes. My fingers trail the chain links as I wonder aloud: where's the key?

"Key." I open my mouth and bubbles spew. Water spills into my lungs, greedily shoving air aside. I gasp, choke and sputter in retaliation. However, to no avail, my lids begin to flutter in defeat. Sleep approaches me from the bottom of a trench, slowly coaxing me to give up. And for a fraction of a second, I think about it. The ocean floor roars with darkness, and as my heavy lids shut, my mind floats. I hit the sand softly, preparing to succumb to whatever it is that possesses such a vendetta toward me. Darkness becomes darker, if possible, and it's decided I'm tired of screaming, thrashing and fighting. My lungs ache for air, burning into my ribcage and pleading with me. _Find air. Breathe, Bella_. They cry and burn with a fervor. _I just want to sleep_, my mind retaliates. And before my future career as a schizophrenic can takeoff, air enters my burning lungs. I choke and cough, spewing excess water from my stomach. I roll on my side, into a bed of dry sand, exhausted and sopping. I decide that now, I may sleep forever. However, an angel gently croons.

"You can't sleep just yet." He coaxes with a voice of dripping, golden honey. I moan, my body battered and my organs on fire.

"Why not?" I sigh and crack my eyes open. I find myself on a miniscule island. Waters surrounds all sides and I emit a deep sigh into the yellow bedding of sand. It's cool and spreads across my cheek, mingling with my drenched ocean hair.

"I don't see why you would want to." He says softly. The voice belongs to Edward. He perches atop a rock, his face aglow and perfect. However, he sprouts wings, white and billowing with feathers. They sit on his back, drooped slightly and I grip a handful of sand between my fingers.

"I'm tired." I murmur and sand sticks to my lips.

"So?" He blinks those green eyes. "Everyone gets tired, Bella. You see, the thing about sleeping forever is that it's the only thing left to do. What if you sleep for all of eternity and everyone else is awake? You can't condemn yourself to eternal darkness. You're tired, but I'm tired too." He says in a peculiar tone and I blink, twice. I continue to lay on my side and disregard the ridiculous situation.

"Were you always an angel?" I squint and cough dryly. My hand continues spilling and collecting sand.

"No." He laughs darkly, and suddenly, his drooped wings have disappeared. He's next to me now, peering deep into my eyes. I suck air into my burning lungs and gaze back.

"Oh." I mumble meekly. My sopping flesh glints translucently in the island's sun, and as usual, it's sprinkled in an abundance of black and blue. Edward hovers his palm above my forearm in silent conversation, and to my potential downfall, I allow him to. His fingers trace my hurt gently, circling the blue and stroking the black. I hold my breath and lull myself with his gentle patterns.

"Where's yours?" I close my eyes.

"My what?" He questions in yet another peculiar tone.

"Your hurt." I mumble into the sand. He withdraws his fingers from my forearm, only to brush the wet locks from my eyes.

"Ready?" He whispers gently. My eyes crack open and scan for anything and everything. And when I find it, I gasp.

Gashes trek the length of his arms. They carve deeply in his pale skin, some lines longer than the others. However, with the same depth and velocity of pain. The scars are a faint purple, a medium brown and a deep red. They span from his wrist to the crease of his elbow in a meticulous fashion, and I'm certain I can hear my heart crack into two pieces.

"Why?" Tears prick my eyes and I stare at him through a filmy wall of water.

"I wanted to sleep forever too, Bella." He averts his gaze and I slowly lift myself onto my elbows.

"Edward," I choke and cough shakily into the sand. "I-" But the broken angel is gone, and in a flash of light, so am I. I wake up, panting and heaving, only to find myself in the white room with the black television and incredible stranger in the other bed.

"Edward," I repeat, this time, in reality. He turns his head toward me and for the first time, I see emotion in his emerald eyes: sadness. "Edward." I whisper.

"You talk in your sleep." He says inaudibly and I exhale shakily.

"Blood loss. It was blood loss, wasn't it?" I grip the railings and a lock of my shortened hair falls into my face. It's silent for a moment as he averts his eyes to the film noir movie on the television screen.

"Yes." He finally says.

"Why?" I blink and inhale raggedly. My broken ribs are caked in pain.

"Because I didn't feel like sticking around anymore." He mutters.

"You think I do? You're the one who told me I'm not allowed to sleep forever." I refute hotly and weakly brush the lock from my face.

"I never said that, Bella." He draws his eyes downward.

"In my dream, you did." My eyes brim with tears once more and I rake them away with the back of my hand.

"That was your dream. He says gently and I shake my head vigorously.

"It wouldn't have been in my dream if a small fraction of it weren't true." I rebuttal dramatically and grip the railing harder. My knuckles jut through the pallid, stretched skin and his green eyes blink in notice.

"Okay, Bella," He coaxes. "What's in your sub conscious is a small representation of your conscious. This is true. Okay? But maybe I didn't mean what was said as a representative toward myself."

"What do you mean?" I relax my grip slightly and sigh.

"I don't want _you_ to give up. You can't." He shakes his head.

"You don't know me." I respond in a tone which reveals my desire for the opposite.

"No, I don't," His response stings. "But from the few interactions with you, Bella, I've decided you _are_ too good for this. Before they cut your hair, you said something in your sleep. Something about shame and being worthy. You're too good to condemn yourself to an eternity of painful sleep. Listen to me when I say this. I know why you wanted your hair cut: you wanted the weight gone. He hurt you and to you, this was a stage in your life. Of course, you wanted that gone. How could you not? Here you are, fresh new cut. You're starting over. You don't see it, but I used to see it everyday. You can't stop now, okay?" He sighs and brushes his bronze locks. My eyes stray his linen bandages for a moment before I meet his stare.

"What do you mean, 'I used to see it everyday'?" I gaze. A looming silence settles over the room and I shift uncomfortably.

"Everyone was something before they go insane," He picks at a thread in his blanket. "But even when you're insane, bits of who you were continue to stick with you."

"I was an art student…" I trail.

"Ah, but you still are." He continues picking at the lengthening thread.

"And what were you?" I question slowly. The clock ticks loudly, deafeningly in my left ear.

"I used to… Treat people." He murmurs.

"What did you treat people for?" I squint and prop myself painfully up.

"Sanity. Insanity. But what's the difference anymore? I've become what I studied." Edward mumbles so lowly that the clock is louder.

"You were a psychologist?" My eyes widen and the silence returns.

"Does it matter what I was? The irony mocks me more than death does."

"What happened to you?" Tears reenter my eyes and I gaze at the broken angel from my dream.

"Perhaps we should discuss other things." He flickers a crooked smile. I become unsettled and shake my head.

"Isabella Marie Swan. I turned 21 the other day. Junior at Seattle University. Art major. I'm from Forks. Only child. Divorced parents. Bipolar I disorder. Klutz. Un-athletic. Trying to figure out what I was before Jake -." And this is where I stop myself. I freeze and the clock ticks louder.

"Jake," He repeats. "So that's his name."

"Y-Yes." I whimper and shut my eyes. His dark, angered face flashes across my mind and I flinch severely.

"Edward," He begins slowly. "Anthony Cullen." At the latter, my eyes fly open. Questions dot my countenance, yet he holds a hand up. "I'm 25. Harvard graduate. Psychology major. I'm from Forks as well. Clinical depression." He connects those green eyes with mine and my heart pumps against my broken ribs.

"Cullen?" I furrow my brow. "What about family?"

"What's your underlying cause, Bella? Genetics and abuse?" He suddenly asks in a strange tone. The latter stings at me and I clamp my eyes shut.

"Yes." I whisper.

"Why do you want to know what happened? Why?" He demands. The silence seeps into my pores and I inhale shakily.

"Because I don't think you deserve your own personal hell. Hell, maybe, depending on what you've done once upon a time. But not this type. Not yours. I don't think you deserve to give up, either. You better have a good reason, Edward." My eyes fly open and an unnamed emotion streaks across his eyes. He ducks his head and continues plucking at the thread. His shoulders droop slowly, just as his wings did, and I begin to feel myself falling for someone who is more broken than I.

"Okay." His perfect lips scarcely move.

**Edward:**

I gaze at Bella. I gaze at the respirator snaking out of her nose, the IV protruding from the crease of her elbow. They prod at my pity vat. Her arms, so thin and delicate hang at her rail-thin side. Her complexion is pallid, translucent even, causing the bruises caking her body erupt. They're explosive in color on her colorless body, and although she's confined to her bed by tubes and hurt, this girl has a spark to her. How can a girl, so plagued by pain, emit a dull, although perpetual, sunshine? I drink her broken body in, and juxtapose its battered exterior to her face. I'd be lying if I said I'd seen a girl more beautiful.

_Bella_, I want to say. _I think you're incredible, and if I ever see him, I'll fucking kill him. I'll kill him, cut him into bits and give it to you for Christmas. After I kiss your sweet, loving lips. Because I'm really very crazy about you, although I'm crazy myself. And I think you're beautiful, despite your misfortunes. And I'm barking mad. And depressed beyond belief. And falling for you._ But I say quite the opposite.

"Again, why is it you'd like to know so much?" I glance up at her awaiting eyes. At times, they're alight and deep. At others, they're dull and laced with tears.

"I want to know why you wanted to give up. I don't think you deserve to go to sleep forever." She purses her lips and coughs shakily. I shut my eyes and allow the memories to flood.

"_Oh, darling, how I've missed you." My mother enters my embrace. I smooth her reddish-brown hair, my hair, as she smiles into my chest._

"_I've missed you too." I grin and give her a final squeeze. She withdraws and tilts her head up at me, her green eyes shining._

"_Won't you come home?" She frowns slightly and I sigh._

"_I am home." I joke and she scowls._

"_You know what I mean, dear." I study my mother's face, the face I've grown to unconditionally love. Her balanced lips and sloped nose tend to attract many men. Yet, it's the shining hair, the bright eyes which slam it home. It's obvious why my father fell in love with her. It is less obvious, however, why he left her. Why he left us. And why she kept his name, I do not know._

"_Work just isn't as good out here." I furrow my brow and brush my hair back with a single hand._

"_But New York is so far, Edward. And you were in Massachusetts for college, too. We _miss_ you." She huffs and a dark cloud envelops her youthful face. I smile lightly, attempting to assuage her._

"_We'll see, Mom." Yet at this moment, I'm rammed from the side. _

"_Edward!" A muffed voice permeates the inside of my sleeve. Her dirty blonde braid slips over her shoulder as she presses her face against me, and I cannot help but throw my head back in laughter._

"_Beth," I greet my teenage sister. "You crazy girl." She pulls her face away and shines that mega-watt smile. The three of us possess the same eyes, the same shade of green, although she is the outlier in the hair department. Her crop of blonde belongs to the man I never knew – to the Cullen side of the family. To the name I do not want. For secretly I'm glad I have my mother's hair, her looks. The Masen look._

"_I'm so glad you're home." She sighs giddily and hops toward the island counter. Elizabeth swivels around in one of the wooden chairs, humming to herself and swaying her braid. Her dull green shirt depicts a frowning planet Earth with a thought bubble: _You'll All Die Before Me Anyway.

"_Nice shirt. Very cynical." I smirk and she rolls her eyes._

"_You're the one who taught me cynicism." She teases._

"_True." I shrug and toss my Volvo's keys onto the white countertop._

"_Oh, and by the way, stranger, I've committed to Rutgers." She grins nonchalantly and my mouth hangs._

"_That's wonderful," I step toward her and scramble her into an embrace. "You're going off in the fall?" She nods her head into my chest and pulls back._

"_We'll only be a state away." She bobs her head cheerily._

"_Hey, what about Mama?" My mother juts her hip and we turn to her._

"_I'll email everyday." Elizabeth drums her fingers._

"_And I'll call every other." I smirk before opening a cabinet to rummage for kitchen contents. _

"_You better. And Edward, give your cousin Alice a call, would you? She's been dying to see you." My mother commands and snatches the keys from the counter._

"_I'll do it in a bit." I murmur and fish a box of crackers from the cabinet. _

"_If you're hungry, let's go for food." Beth yawns and stretches herself across the counter. Her cut-off jean shorts ride up slightly and I frown._

"_Don't tell me you wears those around boys." I close the cabinet door and move onto opening the cracker box._

"_Oh, hush. I'm a high school graduate. I'm not so little anymore." She rolls her eyes and continues to stretch._

"_Mom?" I cock an eyebrow._

_She shrugs. "You heard her. But I do agree. Let's go out to lunch." She grabs her purse from a swivel chair and fumbles around with the contents._

"_I'll drive." I outstretch my palm yet she shakes her head._

"_No, no. I'll drive. You're tired." _

"_I'll drive." Beth pipes in yet we both raise our eyebrows at her. _

"_I'm driving, Edward." My mother quips and I sigh lightly._

"_Fine."_

_Being 25 years old in the passenger seat is a small blow to one's ego. My mother enters the highway, driving in her state of paranoia, just the way I've grown to deal with. The speedometer hits 40 mph. Although it drives me near mental, I shut my eyes. She chirps on about life in Forks as my sister hums a tune. And I think about work. I think about Tanya's heightened bouts of depression, the desperation in her eyes as she gripped my wrist in the office._

"Don't go home. Stay with me. I need you." She pleaded. Her fingers latched onto me as I attempted to shrug them off.

"Stop it, Tanya. We're not together. You are my patient, I am your psychiatrist and that is our _only_ relationship." I reprimanded somewhat harshly as I walked out the door.

"You can't leave me. If you leave, I'll kill myself." She shrieked, and for a split second, I almost wanted her to.

_I think about these things. They envelop my mind. I sigh deeply and wonder if maybe my patients' psyche will be my doom. I think about these things so deeply that I don't see the car, blazing down the median at 90 mph. I don't see the fear in my mother's eyes. I don't see my life turn a sharp corner, sending my old self and everything behind into a wall with oblivious inertia. What I do see, however, is her jerking the wheel. I see her attempt to avoid drunken man heading straight toward her. I see our Volvo swerving, tires squealing, as we spin out of control. I hear Elizabeth shriek. I hear my mother emit a sob and a declaration of her love for us both. _

"_Hold on tight." She yells and I hear the crunching of the metal as the Suburban rams the driver's side. My head slams the passenger window as the frame of our Volvo buckles and gives way. It's a screeching, a sound so heinous that I think it's Satan and his laughter. In a semi-conscious state, our car flips and crunches and flips. Finally landing in a crumpled mess of silver metal. Glass flies, searing the leather and my flesh. And the smell, pungent and bold, fills the air. There is a split second of silence before my eyes flutter shut and the screaming ensues. Running footsteps patter toward me and I blindly feel my way. The sick, sweet smell of blood enters my nostrils and a spew of hydrochloric acid bubbles in my mouth. I spit it out, eyes rolling back, as I pat for my mother's hand. I find her fingers. They're warm, caked in her oozing blood._

"_Mom," My voice bubbles in blood and vomit. "Mom." I squeeze her hand, but her fingers are limp. I squeeze harder, in desperation, when I open my eyes. In the rubble, I can only make out half her body. Her eyes are closed in a peaceful manner, despite the blood caking her youthful, beautiful face. Glass shards jut out of her head as bloodied hair is askew. My eyes prick at the woman who raised me. The woman who never left me. I brush the locks from her face as blood trickles down my fingers, and as the tears fall down my own face, I lean forward to kiss her forehead. I tremble as my lips press against the warm blood on her creamy skin, and for the last time, I say goodnight to my mother._

"_Goodnight. Goodnight, Mom." I choke through my tears and taste her salty blood on my lips. And then I force myself to search for my sister. Yet there's no room to do so, as the only bit intact from the wreck was my passenger seat. Shouts and screams fill my atmosphere outside, but in the bubble of metal wreckage, I turn around to find Elizabeth._

"_Beth," I begin to cry harder. "Beth, talk to me." And what I do find of her is her bloodied, blonde hair. The deep red of blood and blonde of my unknown father's locks mingle together, creating a sopping mess of disaster. An arm juts out from the rubble, deeply severed. So severed I can see the white of her bone, the pink of her muscle and of course, the red of her blood. My hand grasps a fistful of her hair, and I realize now that this mass of hair and bit of arm are the only thing left of my sister. "You can't leave me." I repeat Tanya's words. I cry out as my tears mix with blood. My blood, my mother's blood, my sister's blood. "You can't leave me." And this was the first step my new life had taken, for I am now Tanya Denali. I am now every patient who's ever come to me with delirium, with psychosis, with severe depression. I'm in the glass box now, just as the metal wreckage. For when they freed me with the Jaws of Life forty minutes later, my life left with my mother and my sister's. _

"You want to know that badly, then?" I gaze at Bella, unaware of the tear trickling out of the corner of my right eye. Her eyes widen and she gently brushes her blanket with fingertips.

"Edward, we don't have to talk about it. Is that why you were silent for so long? You were remembering?" She murmurs softly and I wipe my single tear.

"The past is my hell. The present is my hell. But what is my future?" I tilt my head at her and she blinks.

"You make it what you want it to be. Escape your cell or stay there."

* * *

**Sorry sorry sorry for the super late update! Writer's block and summer and well... Yeah.**

**No excuse. Enjoy, enjoy. It's sleepy time for me! :)**

**x, JC44**


	4. Lack of Color by Death Cab For Cutie

**Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight**

* * *

_**"A pearl is a beautiful thing that is produced by an injured life. It is the tear [that results] from the injury of the oyster. – Stephan Hoeller**_

"Good morning," a buttery voice wafts into the room. I mumble instinctively and allow my eyes to crack open. A nurse, clad in radiating white, flits over to the eastern side of the room. A set of cheap, decrepit windows lay embedded within the peeling wall. Ancient paint curls desperately around the edges, begging for renewal. Thick, suffocating curtains shade light from trickling in. Her thin fingers fumble with the curtains and finally, she snaps them aside. She cracks the window open slightly, beckoning in a strong breeze. The curtains whip and snap, furling furiously toward the chalk ceiling. Her mouth forms a perfect _o _as the breeze rustles her meticulous bun. "Oops." She shrills and snaps the window shut. The curtains balloon slowly toward the ground, dying, as her hair mimics the same motion. Brilliant sunshine illuminates the window, piercing my body and crusting my eyes shut. Silence follows the absence of Seattle's autumn wind and after a moment, I reopen them. The nurse shuffles in the far corner, placing Edward's daily schedule at the foot of his bed. I glance at the forlorn window to find the wind desperately, lithely working its way into hidden cracks. And I don't doubt it, because everything has its hidden cracks. A miniscule hole in a window or a crack ranging from the niche between toes to the end of a hair follicle can constitute as such. Yet when Edward's emerald eyes meet mine on this windy Seattle morning, I stop breathing. Because maybe every crack can be smoothed out once more, just as it once was, once upon a time. Yet I glance at my patterned, pasty arms and remember that fairytales are for girls who sink to the bottom of the ocean.

……

Pain heals over time. A week passes and rings of sickly yellow begin to form around my temporary tattoos. Green the shade of a disease manifests within the core of each bruise, as does the midnight blue. However, the black is fading. Perhaps, down into my pores, tainting every broken fiber of my being. Or, that's already occurred. I've regained vision in my eye, only to have it splattered with none other than black and blue.

I wheeze a sigh, air whistling through my cracked ribcage. The sun does not shine today, instead, the thick curtains are kissing; shielding out the sky's blanket of clouds. The television buzzes softly in the background, announcing the move of every Mariner up to bat. Hospital life whirs on: the drip of my IV - a constant stream of saline gushing into my battered frame. The thundering of the clock which adheres to time and its unchanging tyranny of aging. The bustling nurses who loyally attend to the room's two inhabitants and of course, the man in the other bed. We speak routinely. Often about our interests, occasionally about our lives, yet never about our pain. His story has not been acknowledged in the past week. And when I catch his stare every buttery or shrouded morning, I feel his appreciation burning into me. Perhaps one day I'll be ready to tell him mine.

But for now our eyes are on the game.

"Yes! A double! Get it, baby!" Emmett booms heartily. He beams, fingers wiggling through the thick, tainted air. Cheers erupt from the television, squealing loudly in accordance to the flickering frames of light on the shadowed floor. I murmur and strain a weak smile. His chair squeaks loudly against the tiling as he readjusts his position. The plastic chair struggles to uphold his muscular build while it moans and creaks in retaliation. As his boisterous cheering continues, I attempt to clear my throat. I am not heard.

"Emmett," I croak. My head torpidly turns to him. His face is basked in the television light as his grin spreads across his profile. "Emmett," I attempt again, a bit louder. My voice struggles to carry itself across the small span of space, and of course, I'm unheard. "Emmett." I command for the last time, my voice gurgling. Phlegm spews from the back of my throat and dribbles down the right corner of my mouth. My lungs are set ablaze and I begin an uncontrollable fit of coughing. Internally on fire, I choke and sputter for air.

"Shit, Bella." Emmett's eyes widen. He scurries from his seat to my side, craning over and thwacking my back. The base of his palm wallops me, sinking down into my skin, plunging all the way through. I gasp violently and fold into myself before there is a ringing in my ears. My eyes snap shut and I enter the familiar world of darkness.

"_Shut the fuck up, Bella." Jacob roars deafeningly._

"_No, please, Jacob," I beg hysterically, "I don't know that guy. He just asked me for directions. Jacob. Jacob. Jake, I swear, I –" His palm clamps around my chin, fingers digging in, making their usual mark. His sweet, sticky breath pools into my nostrils. It's dizzying, knocking me onto the backs of my heels. His body is on fire as he sets flames upon me too._

"_Don't lie to me." He barks and clamps my chin tighter. The joints in his fingers crack as the tips drill into my skin. The silence is on fire. I stare into his blackened eyes and immediately begin to sob._

"_I'm not. Jake, listen to me. Let me go. Please –" Yet he shoves me into the door frame. I reel backward, catching the doorknob during my fall. I cower, gripping onto the knob, hoping that it'll float up. Up, up and away. He stumbles over to me, towering and casting a black shadow over my folded body._

"_Shut up." He slurs and slaps my back with an open palm. I squeeze my eyes shut and enter my temporary haven of darkness. He continues to slam my back, meticulous in his drunken rage not to batter me where it can be exposed. I cough and sputter, folding into myself so that I disappear all together._

"Let me go," I sob into my pillow, "Please. Please, don't hurt me." I beg into the sopping fabric of the case. I hysterically clutch my blanket, face hidden in my sea of tears. There is a harrowing silence before I realize that no one is touching me. Not even God. I slowly lift my heavy head, hair frazzled and matted, cheeks streaked with tears. I find the medical staff surrounding my bedside, peering down with concern on their rigid faces. Doctor Cullen gazes at me strangely, as if afraid to inflict pain upon me with even the wrong look. Emmett stands next to him, hand clasped tightly over the mouth with saucer eyes. Horror masks his face, painting it a shade of solid ivory.

"I… I-I… Bella, I… Oh, Bella… Oh, Christ, I'm so sorry. I-I…" He sputters through the cracks in his fingers. He recedes in height, shrinking to the ground and peering up at me large, pleading eyes. I blink slowly, staring down at him. Staring down at a man, for once. Not up. My shadow is cast over him and his fingers slowly grip my bedside railing. "I'm so sorry." He lowers his head. I glance up at my blonde doctor. The corners of his mouth are pulled downward and finally, I glance to him; the broken angel from my dream. I meet his beautiful eyes and for once, emotion is streaked across them. His longing sadness pierces my core and I'm cast in a sea of emotions.

"Oh, fuck me," I suddenly cry out, "Just kill me, would you? Would you, Doc? I'm sick of this. I don't understand why you're even trying." I heave, choking on my own primal, shuddering sobs. Emmett immediately places a hand on my wrist before snapping it back.

"Has she taken her medication today?" Doctor Cullen calmly inquires. A shining nurse fiddles about, pulling my dry-erase board from the foot of my bed.

"Her Orthoxycol?" She squeaks in a high, tittering voice.

"No," he continues in a tranquil manner. "The Lamictal, Rachel. Has she had her daily dosage?" He gazes at her expectantly and I feel Edward's stare burning into me.

"Why the fuck are you trying?" I snap. The room is blurred through my wall of tears and I grip balls of the thin blanket in my fists. "Can't you see I'm in Hell?" Emmett buries his head into my cot. Shaming himself. The air is thick, sticking to everyone's pores.

"Rachel," the blonde Doctor repeats serenely, "Would you be so kind to get Bella's medication?" He taps his clipboard curtly and she bobs her head up and down. She bolts out of the room and I sink down into the bed.

"Stop," my hot tears begin to slow. I shut my eyes and they continue to leak out the sides, lining my lashes as my familiar, personal mascara. "I can't do this anymore." Animalistic whimpers escape my throat.

"Get her, Ambien too." Doctor Cullen shouts out into the hallway. It crackles against my ears yet he's in a different dimension; outside the bubble. He peers into my personal Hell, convincing himself he can touch me. That he can understand and fix me. But if I'm in a bubble swimming with demons, no blonde angel can sew me back up. I breathe in through my nose slowly, chest rising, air whistling through the cracks in my ribs. I exhale just as slowly, discarding my heightened emotions. I open my eyes calmly, cast in complete frustration over my emotional outburst. My fingers immediately move toward rubbing the tears off my cheeks, but there is a dangling handkerchief in front of my eyes. I gaze at the soft cotton for a moment, wondering if it will pass through the bubble. Next to the gesture is a plastic cup littered in pink and blue pills. I sigh raggedly; at least these will pass through. I wash them down as Nurse Rachel dabs my eyes lightly. And as everyone stares at my broken shit show, my eyes slink over to Edward. He looks into my eyes, not at my bruises. Not my sloppy hair, my pasty skin, my purple eye or anything else that holds myself together with only a string of hope. He looks into my eyes. And maybe the perfect, blonde angel can't pass through my bubble, but imperfect angels who can swim to the bottom of the ocean can.

**EPOV:**

"Hello, Edward." A voice greets me. I glance up from the shabby wheelchair; the petty confinement of my current existence. Fuck this. I meet the gaze of a man. Quasi-curly hair. Copper tint to an otherwise auburn mop. Average height. Hazel eyes. Suit, tie, the workings of a corporate slave; a typical shrink.

"Hello." I mutter and wait for his move. The man maneuvers around a cheap, tacky desk, clacking his loafers against the gleaming white tiles. I'm almost positive the fluorescent lights burn a radiation into the back of my scalp, and I decide I'm already tired of this.

"So, Edward. I'm –"

"A shrink," I mutter flatly. "You're a hospital psychiatrist here to prescribe more to my arsenal of suppressants, depressants, benzodiazepines. Anything to send me on some oversea adventure to Crazy Island with the S.S. Prozac and Captain Ambien. Anything else I need to know?" I drum my fingers against the wheelchair. The noise reverberates off the ceiling and I can't help but smirk at the poor fellow's countenance.

"Oh," I sigh, "But I'm rude. Continue, would you? I'd hate to steal your thunder."

He blinks once, composing himself. "I'm Matthew. I figure I'll tell you that much since you've already sorted me out. Unless you can guess names."

"No. Not my specialty." I mutter flatly. He nods once and adjusts his tie.

"Look, Edward. I'm not going to beat around the bush. Yes, I am your hospital appointed psychiatrist. But in order for our sessions to be effective, I need your trust." He gazes at me and I have to suppress a snort.

"I get it, Matt. Matt. Can I call you Matt? Well, Matt. I understand the workings of the psychological world. I understand your job and I understand that I am _that_ patient who surmounts the pinnacle of douchebaggery, but I don't need your help. I can help myself, thank you. We're both wasting our time." I tug at my hospital gown. The lights beat down on me, searing my eyes and igniting my spite.

He crosses his arms and nonchalantly leans back against his desk. With a single glance and a scowl, I prepare myself. "It's fine, Edward. I'm not sure what event in life made you so cynical, but I'll find out, eventually. You can be stubborn today. Tomorrow, for a week, if you choose. But you will be helped. I can guarantee you that." He states and I raise an eyebrow.

"So… What? We sit in silence for an hour? Ah, productivity." I smirk and he shakes his head.

"I'd assess you, but that doesn't seem like it'd fit in your schedule for today." Matthew the Shrink scowls sourly and I shrug.

"No, not really."

"So is that what you are? Some hardened, cynical… _Individual_," he strains and I grin, "Because of your past? I understand that. However, on my record here," he jabs his finger onto the table, "it states you have clinical depression. You're not the macho, stone man you appear to be. You have a psychological illness that needs to be treated." He folds his arms. There is a buzzing, sickening silence that eats away at my eyes. The kind that manifests hatred and insensible actions.

"You don't know me," I begin evenly, "don't you dare think you know me or my past. Don't think because you have a degree from some mediocre university that means that you can dissect me. Dissect someone else, but not me. You don't want to know me. You don't want to know what I see, hear, dream. You'll become like me. Look, Matt, psychologist to psychologist?" He gazes at me stunned. "You'll go crazy too. They'll get you. They'll throw a blanket over you, suffocate you until you can't find your way out again. You seem okay for now, but wait. Wait for it, because you'll snap one day. And don't think because you're decent looking, have a decent job, went to a decent school and probably have a decent wife, you'll evade it. Soon, you'll take work home with you. And then something will happen. Oh, you'll know. One day, your life is great. Untouchable. The next, you won't know what life is anymore."

**BPOV:**

My eyes flutter, struggling to grasp my surroundings. Sleep continues to caress me, curling into me. Ambien is my lover. I mumble incoherencies, fighting off its suffocating love. The familiar components of the room sharpen into focus: the buzzing television, the sickening glow of the florescent lights, the thick white curtains, my beeping heart monitor; reality. The simple ticking of a clock in reality is worse than any demon in subconscious surrealism. Memories of this morning flood my mind, spilling through the folds of my brain, leaking down into my heart. Oh no.

"Edward?" I ask meekly and struggle to turn on to my side.

"Bella." He responds flatly.

"I'm sorry you… Had to watch… That… Earlier, I mean." I murmur and a thick blush creeps up my cheeks. He studies me for a moment silence. Carefully, he raises his fingers to brush his feral bronze locks back. The thick linen bandages winding his arms are soiled. Sopping and dripping with rubies, he merely ignores this.

"You have color in your cheeks." he comments. I blink, shell shocked. My face reddens further and the blush creeps toward my neck.

"It's my disorder. Not the color, I, um… I'm just ashamed. I say things that aren't sensible. I… I'm sorry. It was horrid to watch, I imagine. I…" I stumble and trail, twisting my tongue into a knot.

"Well," he says curtly. "I think you look very beautiful with a bit of color in you." My breath catches in my throat and there is silence. _It's too early to fall for someone else_, a voice in my head hisses. I recoil a fraction. _So what? Look how beautiful _he _is_,a second counters. _But look what men have done to you. Look at you. You're not beautiful, Bella. Don't trust a liar,_ the initial voice snaps. I stare at him, my eyes saucers, and rip myself in half.

"I… Thank you," I respond shakily and my heart monitor rate increases. We both glance at the increased rate and my face is ablaze. The corner of his mouth flickers into a fraction of a smirk and I dig my stubby nails into my wrist. "But…" I squeak and his eyes snap to attention. My nails dig deeper. "Maybe it's too.. It's too early…" I whisper.

"Of course, it is," he replies simply, "I was merely stating that you look beautiful with some color." He nods and turns to the television. I stare at him, perhaps for too long. And when I turn to his eyeline match on the Food Network's program, I recall the nails in my arm. I yank them out to find four tiny crescent marks. They nearly pierce my pallid skin, the red blood bubbling beneath the thin, existing layer. A light blue bruising layers on top of the crescent marks. Well, at least I didn't bleed. I study my self-inflicted marks before I'm interrupted; the harrowing squeals of ancient wheels turning cause me to look up. And what I find does not please me.

Nurse Rachel stands between the two beds with a black wheelchair in front of her petite frame. She meets my lackluster stare and beams that signature, cheery smile.

"We're going to go somewhere, Bella." She chirps and I assess the situation. I shoot her a deadened ogle as to how mobility is possible.

"What about my IV? My oxygen?" I question dully and swallow. My throat is parched and the saliva treks down in a sticky, burning fervor.

"You'll have it with you, honey. Let's get you in the chair." She flits toward me and I torpidly shift myself. Edward stares, quasi-mocking, yet all I can think of is his comment. I peel my blanket from my legs to expose my gaunt legs. My wobbly knees jut out, stretching against my pasty skin. Yet unlike the first time, I don't cry. He thinks I'm _beautiful_. I shoot him one last glance as I'm helped into the chair. And as the nurse carries over my IV pole, he stares back. Is he insane? My heart flutters; of course he's insane.

"Well," I mutter under my breath. "The sane can go fuck themselves."

"What's that?" Nurse Rachel cranes down to hear.

"Nothing," I glance up at her. "Let's go on that trip."

"Okay." She chippers and begins to wheel me backward. I smile slightly at my broken, insane, beautiful roommate and he returns a grin. A wicked, omniscient, heartbreaking grin.

……

A beam of merciless light sears my eyeballs. My body recoils, only to be retained by the worn, sickly leather of the wheelchair. My fingers crack themselves, the snapping of a bone, as they grip onto the metal. The icy metal fuses with the bones in my fingers, the pores in my skin. Here, again, confined. As always. My eyes pry themselves open, testing, prodding for the malignancies of light and the demons that don't dwell in the dark. I see a woman. A straitlaced woman. Beautiful, and callous sitting behind a wooden desk. Oceans of honey blonde hair spill from her scalp, falling, precisely, into the center of her back. Her mouth is stretched into a pout, straining the lines. The blood red lipstick swiped on is unperfected, sloppy even. Beady grey eyes and a sleek, black ensemble nestles into the wall, facing me. Staring. She injects ice into my veins, and I figure that this demon doesn't hide from light.

And her skin, so milky, so pale, so vapid, clashes brutally with her black ensemble. There's a clanging in my ears as her attire consumes the pallid span on this onyx woman. She radiates ice. How was white once considered so beautiful? Purity and innocence has never felt so eruptive. I stare, boring into the flesh of ivory and black, unable to stop. The symbolism polar of evil certainly has never seeped into my eyes, washing them, blinding them, even. My burning eyes stray to my fingers, the frail appendages juxtaposed in a devastatingly awkward array. My white fingers. A bomb of disgust unfolds in the pit of my belly; asphyxiating revelations substitute the burning in my eyes.

She looks like me.

I glance at the black on my arms - my own little black ensemble. Yet fifty dollars at clothing store didn't garner me mine. I can't take mine off after living a nightmare of doling out bullshit to the insane. She can wash her black blouse when patients dribble saliva of insanity on it. She can go home, splash some detergent and go to bed. And I, I with my own little black number, must sleep in my slobber of insanity. I ponder for a moment as her eyes bore into me, the blizzard of her stare washing my skin in ice. Silence. And then, I decide I needn't condone what is not my own life. But this is what sticks to that black outfit, that pallid skin:

"Go get a tan. You look sick." I whisper. She cocks an eyebrow and adjusts her raven blouse.

"Well," she issues curtly. "Thank you for the suggestion, Isabella."

"Bella." I correct softly.

"What?" She cranes forward, ear perked. She picks up a pen from the table and begins to fiddle with the cap.

"People call me Bella."

"Bella," she repeats dubiously, "Of course. My apologies. You know, it's wonderful to meet you." Her ruby lips widen and I'm reminded of Edward's soiled bandages.

"You too." I croak.

"Do you know who I am?" The stone woman bats her lashes and I sigh softly.

"Yes." I murmur. Her eyebrows raise and the pen cap is between her forefinger and thumb.

"Oh?" She purses her lips.

"You're a shrink," I cough and instinctively wince. "Sorry." I choke through coughs.

"Well, yes. If you'd like to call it that, Bella. I'm the hospital's psychiatrist. My name is Heidi." Her smile spreads again and I nod numbly.

"Hi." I attempt yet the icy stare bores into me. I shiver.

"Hello. Now, Bella, you were referred to me by Doctor Cullen. So let's get some foundation out of the way," she glances at me and proceeds to pull a clipboard from her desk. "You suffer from bipolar I disorder, correct?" She peers at me through her lashes and I nod silently. She scribbles something onto a blank piece of paper and nods to herself as well. "Okay… Now…" She murmurs and places the cap on the back of the pen in one swift movement. "I have a record of your injuries and medications, provided to me by the hospital. If I see to it that you require excess medication, I'll be prescribing it to you." She looks up at me and I blink.

"Okay."

"Great," She scribbles something else down and rests the tip of her red pen against the white paper. A red dot forms beneath the tip. "Now, Bella. I'm aware of your injuries. The hospital has spoken to authorities, but I'm here for you. I need you to trust me, so we can fix you, okay?" She gives a prosthetic smile.

"You can try." I murmur.

"Yes. Okay, just to get a general idea, Bella, I'm going to perform several Rorschach tests on you." She says and retrieves a folder from her desk.

"Okay."

Heidi opens the folder up and swiftly removes the first inkblot.

"Ready?" She raises her eyebrows and I nod silently. She lifts the sheet up, turning it to me slowly. An amorphous blob of ink is splattered in the middle, branching out around the general circumference. Randomized dots litter the insides of the paper's perimeter and I study the test for a moment.

"A flower," I finally confirm. "With pollen." She nods fervently and scribbles down something onto her notepad. She pulls out the second test, another splattered mess of ink. It's symmetrical and slopes downward at an angle, branching off to other ridiculous amorphous shapes.

"Two women," I say softly. "They're ice skating." Again, she nods, scratches her pen across the pad and pulls out a third test. Feeling confident in my innocent, sane answers, I cannot help but stare for an excess amount of time at the third. The inkblot forms a windshield, two headlights, a bumper and the front angle of two wheels. A tall, thin inkblot is placed to the right of the initial and overall, the test is splattered with ink.

A car. A person. Blood.

My heart sinks. _A car wreck. There's a person to the right crying, Heidi. There's blood everywhere. It's everywhere_, I want to say.

"I don't know," I say instead. Numb. "Can I have another?" She nods and proceeds to pull out a fourth Rorschach test. A tall inkblot is placed vertically on the left side of the paper. On the right side is another inkblot folded in two; into itself. A thin trail of ink connects the two shapes while the piece is dotted with three distinct circles. One circle, however, is on the far right.

"What do you see, Bella?" Heidi peers at me and I stare. Hard. There is a long silence and I feel my body turn to ice.

"I see a man and a woman," I finally murmur. She nods and beckons for me to continue. "He's hurting her. See, she's on the ground, folding into herself. He hurts her, but she loves him. See? See the line between them? She's connected to him. She loves him. See those three circles? That's the cycle of love, pain and suffering. And see that one in the far corner? That's strength. But she can't reach it." And I begin to cry.

* * *

**Sorry for the hiatus all. Busy life, what can I say? So, this is to Matt. Happy birthday!**

**I promised I'd update this for you, so I completely blew off my _actual_ essay so I could bang this chapter out.**

**I hope you, and all the rest of you, enjoy it! Took me... Eh, a whole summer to get over my writer's block. Happy reading**

**x, JC44**


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